EXAM 1 Study Guide - Summary Critical Approaches to Popular Culture PDF

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Study guide for first midterm...

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John Storey – Culture Theory and Popular Culture  Culture o Great art, literature, philosophy  Aesthetic, intellectual greatness  Writers, composers, artists o Way of life  Will mostly be using in the course  Holidays, sports, religion, past time activities, customs o The “Works”  Texts that people produce that we should deconstruct  Can include Shakespeare but also can be the label on a water bottle  Ideology o Professional Ideology  Any party platform  Ideas they stand for o Concealment or distortion of power relations  Derives from Marx  Refers to the idea that culture is determined by the economy o Ideological forms  Broad definition of texts through different ideologies communicated  EX) Mein Kampf, Oxford dictionary (structures the way we use language and how to say words), Cat in the Hat (tells you how to behave and treat others) o Connotation  Understanding how ideologies are transmitted to us  Unconsciously transmitted  Car advertisements  One is desert, other is tundra  Extreme situations where cars aren’t good for these environments  Obama hope logo  Pepsi rebranded a little after logo surfaced o Practices of everyday life  Help understand how to secure consent to an unequal system  POPULAR IS POLITICAL AND NEVER WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE  Ten ways to think about popular culture o Well liked by many  No one in class has no checked social media or TV today  Typical day has 10.45 hours of media exposure o That which isn’t “high”  Everything that is left over when you take out high culture  High is intellectual and low is mass  EXAMPLE: high culture (Beethoven) v. low culture (2chainzzz) o Mass culture  Comes to you, does not need to be sought out

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Critics call it mass culture or low culture Develops under urbanization Concerned about mass consumption that is mass produced by mass proportions  Difference between people creating their own culture  Regarded as passive and mindless  Lots of things fail, if audiences are as passive as theorists think they are, why do things fail? o American Culture  Europeans against American popular culture  Came from both political right and left  Loss of cultural autonomy and loss of cultural authority  Seeing different world through film o Culture of the people  What people make  EX: Mercedes ad  Many people use the car for different reasons  Janis Joplin song makes it approachable  Brings Mercedes to the people o Hegemonic  Took ideas from Antonio Gramsci  Aims to understand how the masses are obtained by the cultural elite without coercion  Why do people make decisions that aren’t good for their economic being?  Compromise equilibrium  Disarticulation or articulation o Touring campaign in the UK “socialism” with bars on it so you have a visual clue that socialism will imprison you o Postmodernist perspective: no high/low distinctions  High level binary was collapsed  No distinction between art and commerce  Making and re-making same formulas o Youth Culture  Popular is in young people o Intertextual  Exist in more than one form  Harry Potter – books, movies, theme park, video games, Halloween costumes, sippy cup  Not high culture o Product of Industrialization/urbanization  Mass culture derives from this QUOTES: o “The study of popular culture amounts to something more than a simple discussion of entertainment and leisure”

Michael Schudson – The New Validation of Popular Culture  How we should go about studying popular culture o Production o Content o Reception  Schudson does not blames power hungry elites and greedy institutions for the creation and perpetuation of useless distinctions between “better” and “worse” culture- Universities are apart of this game and that is what keeps him employed o He says it is okay that there are things that are better and things that are worse o Everyone does this all the time- move away from this notion o When we watch baseball, we don’t want to watch little league (the price of the ticket will even tell us who we want to watch and who we don’t want to watch) o We are admiring their art  He offers a mediation on role of cultural distinctions (Who makes them? To what end? What is at stake? What happens if we abandon them? Is there still room to say text a is better than text b?) o How far should this trend go?  Meaning of “text” produced by interplay between the thing itself and the “reader” (consumer)  Only passive consumption is problematic o A meaningful text is only as meaningful as we make it  “The quality of the reading rather than the quality of the object then takes center stage and the critic is more producer than evaluator or consumer” o The power of the text does not reside in the text but it lies in between the relationship between the reader and the text itself- it is all relative o It matters less whether at Penn you are studying Shakespeare, the Harlem shake or Brittany spears  He warns of the dangers of going too far with this “democratizing” “sociologizing” trend o Texts are not works o Utility is not meaning o There is a lot more meaning in a traditional text- it is worth our attention to focus on written texts than other form of texts (shoes, McDonalds)  Just because some people can receive popular culture one way, not everyone sees it that way (academics can understand a lot more than ordinary people can- they might thing something has a hidden meaning while the average person just sees the basic meaning)  He is saying that we should leave room for saying that not everything is equaland not every text need to be studied the same way  The challenge is not to deny a place for judgment and valuation but to identify the institutional, national, class, race, and gender based biases set deep in past judgments and to make them available for critical reassessment o Reassess who has taught us to think this certain way o Always examine where our ideas around morality and superiority come from

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QUOTES: o “The quality of reading rather than the quality of the object then takes center stage and the critic is more producer than evaluator or consumer” o “The challenge is not to deny a place for judgment and valuation but to identify the institutional, national, class, race, and gender-bound biases set deep in the past judgments and to make them available for critical reassessment.” Dwight Macdonald - A Theory of Mass Culture  Exploits rather than satisfies cultural need of masses  Folk is good and Mass is bad o High is produced by singular artists, spoiled guy and wealth o Mass is between both o Likes separation of high and folk  Autochthonous: native, of the people  TEN CONCERNS: o Gresham’s Law  Economic principle: bad money drives out good  Mass culture drives out high culture o Ease of pop culture  Simple  More quickly enjoyed  Manipulation of audience through laughing cues and music  Why go to Notre Dame to see the architecture when we can go to Penn? o Homogenization  No clear boundaries between high and low  Everything mixed together, like homogenized cream  Life magazine – gossip and news  Story about US marines finding pirates but advertised with Jack Sparrow o Democracy  Tyranny of the majority  If the masses decide the culture we consume, what choices will they make?  Fueled by fear the stupid people will ruin the country  HIGH CULTURE DEFEND ITSELF THROUGH:  Academicism o Adherence to formal or conventional rules and traditions in art of literature  Avantgardism o Promote innovative ideas or techniques in a givenfield o Artists, writers, musicians whose techniques and ideas are markedly experimental or in advance of those generally accepted o Only save us

o Emergence of “Middlebrow”  Cheapening of highbrow o Division of labor  Painter alone probably starving in his room produces high culture  Crew of Transformers film has so many people in it and made by many  True art is made singularly o Infantilized adults and overstimulated children  Merging of childhood and adult audiences  Infantile regression  EX) 40 year old version  Children shown things that grow up too fast  EX) Bratz dolls look slutty o Idols of consumption replacing idols of production  Politics and business profiles declined  No clear boundaries between high and low  Low culture is no talent or overnight talent (American Idol) o Vulgar action heroes replacing “brain” heroes  Spiderman more popular than Sherlock Holmes o Commercial and political exploitation of masses o Limitations  Excessively nostalgic  Makes unsupported claims about the consumers  Ignores subcultures  Underestimates the role of public in production  Blind to contradtictions  QUOTES: o “Like chewing gum” o “It is true that Mass Culture began as, and to some extent still is, a parasitic, a cancerous growth on High Culture.” o “There is slowly emerging a tepid, flaccid, Middlebrow Culture that threatens to engulf everything in its spreading ooze.” Adorno&Horkheimer - The Culture Industry  Critique of late capitalism  False needs o Real needs remain unsatisfied because they have false needs being met o People unconsciously reconcile with capitalism o Freedom to choose different brands on the same product o Working class no longer poses a threat to capitalism  Commodity fetishism o Water is a commodity o Emerald does not have a high use value o Advertising sells false needs over real needs like emeralds over water  Culture industry o Refers to industrialized media production like uniform system

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o Culture + industry = integrates the traditional Marxist focus on political economy with a neo-Marxist interest in culture o All governed by capitalism so it cant be authentic Standardization o Uniform o Clear how film will end in the beginning o Know how songs and movies will end because all reproducing the same thing o Why do something new if we have a formula that alreadt works? Pseudo-individuality o Standardized jazz improvisations to the exceptional film star whose hair curls over her eye to demonstrate her originality o Experience not individualized for us o All Facebook accounts look similar o Build A Bear – think you are building an original bear but you are given same prototype o Can apply to people and products Consumer differentiation o Industry offers products that appear different, but they are not really diverse  This is what the industry wants you to think o Something provided for all so none can escape o Can’t escape depression because extremely distracted by stuff Incorporation o Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in o Once brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it o Artists “selling out” o Culture absorb styles that seem different from the norm then belong to it o Voices apply as well o All news channels want us to phone in Audiences o Forcibly retarded o Docile audience o Stereotypical audience where they are all the same o Nazi use of mass media a major reason for concern about passive audiences o Mass media is manipulating the public o Mass culture and reproduction of capitalism o Public might like the culture industry product but is no defense because it has been determined and shaped the industry itself o Challenging the idea that people “get what they want” from the market o Terrible singers can be marketed as amazing singers o Feel compelled to buy products

o Telephone: liberal  Has a back and forth o Radio: democratic  One person has a microphone and we all look one way  Classroom  People are simply duped, they are agents of their own duping  Limitations o Nostalgic/romantic o No audience research o Assumes no consumer agency and oversates power of “culture industry” over individuals o Deeply pessimistic Frankfurt School - Cultural Theory: Classical and Contemporary Positions  School of neo-Marxist critical theory, social research and philosophy set up in 1923  Relationship between the base (economy, means and relations of production) and superstructure (culture, education, religion, politics, mass media)  Believed that the school and critical writings it produced were mean of liberating people from oppression from “twin cudgels” or “concentration camps and tv for the masses”  Highly influential on future of analysis of pop culture Jim Ferreira - Cultural Conservatism and Mass Culture  Liberals and conservatives have both opposed culture but for different reasons o People have been passified and stupefied to the point where they are unaware of their own oppression o Think masses are idiots who will always choose worst forms of culture o Different sense of where danger is coming from  Cultural conservatives think democracy is bad and disenfranching the masses is good o Want stratification and strict order o Hereditary elites make good decisions o Families dominate US politics: Bush, Roosevelt, Kennedy  Political class by birth, training, blood are adept at making decisions on behalf of all of us o Noblese oblige  Slavery is good for blacks because they won’t know otherwise  Some people shouldn’t be trusted to make political decisions for the rest of us  Cultural conservatives think art as social control is good  Cultural conservatives lament the absesnce of an aristocracy of taste o Middle classes who appear with industrialization o New class of industrialists who have no taste  Cultural conservatives have a clear sense of high/low dichotomies  Michelle Obama v Jackie O o Michelle is too flashy with too many prints that are accessible to people

o Jackie O embodies the unattainable culture that people want by wearing high fashion  Cultural conservatives think high art should be… o Aesthetically unappealing o Intellectually inaccessible  Cultural conservatives see education system as a way to safe guard high culture  Barnes is not a cultural conservative because the choices he made were eyebrow raising at the time  QUOTES: o Crude, sensual, irreverent, base sense instead of higher sense o Doesn’t promote equlity o Democracy erases class lines Herbert Gans - Popular Culture and High Culture  COMPLAINT #1: Negative character of popular culture creation o High culture industry is also profit driven and not above competitive strategies o High culture audience = more homogeneous o Pop culture has genres and diversity, high culture has lots of standardization and repeated themes o Different motives of high vs low culture producers have been exaggerated  Stereotypes on both sides  Mass – sell out that caters to audience they breed  Artists – lonely, misunderstood  Both want to express personal values, taste, impress peers, educate  Creator-audience gap o Greater in popular or high culture? o For creators culture is often the organizing principle in their lives, for users it is tool for information/entertainment o Makes case for need for actual industry research  COMPLAINT #2: Negative effects of pop culture on high culture o Borrowing goes both ways o No evidence that pop brings down high  MacHomer  Bring new audience to Macbeth  Comical o “Luring” artists away not a problem  COMPLAINT #3: Pop culture has negative impact on audiences o Poverty, not pop culture, is to blame for social problems  Easier to blame popular culture o No empirical evidence of Pavlovian effect  All of us have watched murders and rapes in the media but none of us actually do it o Audience far less “enslaved” than imagined  Audience picks and chooses, active member of culture o TV effect not as great as family/peers

o If TV influences political outcomes, the fault isn’t with TV but with inequities of system  COMPLAINT #4: Pop culture has a negative effect on society o Comparison is skewed and nostalgic  Compare best of past to worst of present  Lynching a lot worse than popular culture o If anything there is evidence of taste going up o No evidence that if pop culture didn’t exist there would be more demand for high o Can’t create totalitarianism  Be a tool to use but cannot by itself create a totalitarian government  Other Gans points: o Rejects Marcuse and Ellul  Marcuse similar to Adorno  Worry that popular culture keeps from revolution  Ellul like cultural conservatives  Argue everything in propaganda o Thinks critique is aesethetic masquerading as social concern and that mass culture critics basically don’t LIKE working classes – theirs is a selfserving critique  Trying to ensure dwindling power o Very optimistic re: liberatory effects of modern pop culture and very critical of past conditions in which “high” culture flourished o Likes that pop culture is “user oriented” rather than “creator oriented” o Rejects “dumbing down” hypothesis as elitist and one-sided: let’s look at evidence of “smartening up” o Postscript rejects the “two Neals”  Amusing ourselves to death  Life the move: how entertainment conquered reality  QUOTES: o “Westerns may resemble each other more than high culture drama of a similar genre, but Westerns are as different from family comedies as high culture drama is from high culture comedy.” o “A creator needs an audience as much as an audience needs a creator and both are essential to the product” o “Perhaps popular culture takes more from high culture than vice versa, but partly because its audience is larger and requires more cultural production; if high culture had to satisfy the same quantitative demand, it might borrow more from popular culture than it does now.” John Fiske - Commodities and Culture  Incredibly optimistic: pop culture is of the people o All they can do is produce the product so that we can make cultural meaning  Nomadic subjectivities (not homogenous mass)

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o Even within all of us, we are different audiences o Everyone has different subject identities – change throughout the day within yourself o Know when one is trumping the other o Changes how we act and interact with culture and popular media Active agents, not subjugated subjects o Audience can find, twist, make meaning in the material that we are given o What people do with the materials they are given – we will try to ifnd pleasure and “the good” aspects Popular culture = art of “making do” Rejects “commodified audience” in favor of view of audience as producing means – we take industrial commodities and make meaning with them Believes culture is “polysemic” and bottom up o Has many meanings o Not singular and top down

Interested in the dynamic tension between forces of capitalism and push back from the people o Pluralizing side is the people o Centralizing side is capital o Notion of guerilla warfare  EX: companies make jeans, people bleach and cut them so then jean manufacturers made ripped jeans so people pay so mych money Advertising is not as popular as people claim o We see ads all day and don’t go out and buy everything we see o Many ads and products fail o Even though we are bombarded with ads, the amount we recall is minimal o Mass culture has to hold the interest of people o COUNTER: product placement  Many shows include product placement  Make fun of product placement  Necessary because audience members mute the ads and advertisers need another way to get attention

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De Certeau: guerilla tactics, tricksters, poachers, adaption, manipulation, “art of making do” o Stealthy, nimbleness, shock tactic – get in, get out o Some of this happens in specific places – cultural industry builds the place but the consumer gets to decide what they do inside o Taking over public spaces – industry can create these places but they can be taken advantage of and used for things they weren’t meant for – going against (around) the law o Public spaces  Flash mobs take over a public space  T-Mobile created a flash mob  Regard consumption as the production of meaning Consumption = production (of meaning) o How powerful are the things that we are being told are powerful? Enunciation, not language o Language tells you what words are in existence o Enunciation tells you how they are used o Your watch is sick… it is very cool Ratings don’t capture tactics o Statistics can tell us ...